


Making Friends (You're Doing It Wrong)

by TheNarator



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, E2 is really racist, Gen, Harry needs to calm the fuck down, Racism, Racists, Slurs, Threats of Violence, War of the Americas, aftermath of the war of the americas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 15:04:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6810280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cisco learns why Harry hates him so much. Jesse gets a lesson in how to make friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Friends (You're Doing It Wrong)

Harry Wells had never been the easiest person to work with. He was rude and surly and mean, constantly mocking and belittling those around him and sometimes resorting to physical violence when verbal abuse didn’t feel like enough. He treated manners and common curtesy like they were beneath him, and Cisco like he was something the man had scraped off the bottom of his shoe. He seemed to enjoy watching Cisco suffer, in a sadistic kind of way, and the only times he ever smiled were when he was making Cisco uncomfortable.

There was, Cisco discovered after their trip to Earth-2, one other thing that made him smile, and that was his daughter Jesse. He lit up when she walked into the room, grinned cheerfully at her whenever she looked at him, and seemed to be holding in delighted laughter whenever she opened her mouth. The moment she was gone he was back to his usual surly self, but when Jesse was around he was always in a good mood.

Not that being in a good mood made Harry any easier to deal with. Jesse seemed to find making Cisco’s life miserable just as much fun as Harry did, and one of the things the two of them frequently exchanged smiles over was getting a rise out of him. He did his best to tell himself that Jesse had been through a lot, that Harry was her father and that she couldn’t expect to be emotionally well-adjusted after being raised by him, but somehow it didn’t make her schoolyard bully routine any less annoying.

When Jesse became a speedster however, it seemed almost like things were going to change. She was ever so slightly humbled by her new power, and more than willing to learn from the experience of others when it came to her speed and how to handle it. Cisco made her a suit so she could train without burning through her shoes, which she acted almost grateful for, and let her use the superspeed treadmill to train on, which she appeared nearly impressed by. It seemed, for a while, that becoming a metahuman was going to be the thing that finally let her get out of Harry’s shadow. 

Then Cisco showed her the calorie-dense energy bars.

“And these are the Speedster Bars,” Cisco concluded his inventory of all the things he’d designed for Barry’s use, pulling one of the bars out of his stash in the Cortex. “They’re super high calorie to compensate for the massive amounts of energy you’ll be using.”

He handed the oversized bar to Jesse, and she sniffed at it curiously.

“The first ones I made tasted pretty bad,” Cisco admitted, “but I’ve taken inspiration from high calorie food from all over the world and now they come in a variety of delicious flavors.”

“Does this contain peanuts?” she asked, frowning at it.

“Yeah,” Cisco told her, “peanut oil is a basic ingredient in all of them.”

Jesse pushed the bar gently back into his hands. “Actually, I’m allergic to peanuts.”

“Oh snap!” Cisco widened his eyes dramatically. “Imma have to whip you up something special.”

Jesse smiled, and suddenly a thought struck Cisco. “Hey, you wanna work with me on the formula?”

“Oh, no,” Jesse held up her hands, taking a step back with a nervous smile. “Cooking was _not_  one of my five majors. I’m not like you.”

“Hey, I majored in Mechanical Engineering,” Cisco informed her coolly. “Ain’t nobody got time for Home-Ec.”

“No I just mean I’m not, you know, like you guys,” Jesse repeated. She was still smiling, but now it was less nervous, and it had some of that mocking edge that reminded him of Harry.

“You . . . guys?” Cisco echoed in confusion.

“You know, Southerners,” Jesse clarified. “From South America.”

“I’m from Central City, actually,” Cisco told her dubiously, “but what does being South American have to do with cooking?”

“Just that those are the kind of things your people are normally best at,” Jesse explained. “Cooking, cleaning, that kind of thing.”

She said it quite normally, nodding as she spoke as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and Cisco felt as though he’d just been slapped across the face. Not that he’d thought very much of the Wells family up to now, but he’d assumed that there were at least some lines that wouldn’t be crossed. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach, but he tried to hide it in the face of Jesse’s blithely innocent expression.

“Well that was a little-” he looked for a word, struggling to keep his voice even, “-un-called-for.”

“Not that I think that’s all you’re good for,” Jesse backpedaled hurriedly, looking alarmed. “I’m not like that, I have a lot of respect for your people.”

She grinned, and Cisco gave her a hollow smile in return.

“Ever since the War of the Americas my dad’s been a little-” Jesse made an embarrassed face, “-you know, but that’s just the way he is. I’m not like that.”

“How kind of you,” said Cisco dryly, trying to swallow the bile in his throat.

“I mean,” Jesse forged on as though completely unaware of Cisco’s rising temper, “I understand there are certain biological limitations-”

_“Limitations?”_

“-but you’ve managed to overcome them!” She smiled warmly, patting Cisco’s shoulder as though praising a small child.

At this, Cisco forced his face into an over-enthusiastic smile. “And you’ve done really well with your limitations too!” he said cheerfully, clapping Jesse on the arm in return.

Jesse looked nonplussed. “What?”

“You know,” said Cisco, still grinning, “how girls are more predisposed toward language and communication, rather than math and science? It’s not your fault, it’s just how your brains are wired.”

“That’s not true!” said Jesse, outraged. “Girls are just as good at math and science as boys!”

“And Latinxs are just as good at academics as everyone else!” Cisco spat, startling her enough that she took a step back from him. “That biological limitations crap is pseudo-scientific bullshit, and I’d have expected someone as smart as you to know that.”

“Well-” Jesse began, looking shocked and a bit afraid.

In that moment, Cisco honestly couldn’t have cared.

“Not only did I design those Speedster Bars by mathematically calculating your caloric needs, but I made that Superspeed Treadmill you used this morning,” Cisco said viciously, feeling a sense of visceral satisfaction at the look on Jesse’s face. He began taking slow steps toward her, and for each of his steps forward Jesse took an answering step back.

“I made the reinforced tri-polymer suit you’ve been wearing,” he reminded her, “the Pipeline where we’ll be holding any supervillains you catch, the anti-telepathy headphones that protected your dad from Grodd. I Cisco’d every piece of equipment in this lab, everything you’ve been using to test and flex your powers, and come to think of it I haven’t heard a peep of thanks out of you.”

“It’s not like my dad couldn’t have done that himself,” Jesse said defensively, but her voice wobbled as she said it, like she knew how weak it sounded.

“You know what?” Cisco snapped. “He can go ahead and do it then. From now on you’re banned from using the speedster equipment.”

With that he turned and marched out of the cortex, leaving Jesse stunned and confused behind him. At the door he stopped for a moment and turned, without bothering to really look at her. “And I want my suit back.”

***

Cisco returned to his workroom, hoping that Harry would be too occupied with Jesse to bother him. Rather than working on the second Jesse Quick suit, like he’d been planning, he instead decided to bury himself in one of his own projects. Before long he was lost in it, letting the sheer satisfaction of building something with his own two hands soothe his nerves, but that just meant he wasn’t paying enough attention to hear someone enter the lab.

“Make Speedster Bars for Jesse,” said a voice directly behind Cisco’s head. He jumped, whirling in his chair to find Harry looming over him.

“Jesus,” Cisco gasped, one hand coming up reflexively to clutch at his heart. “Be a little creepier why don’t you?”

“Jesse says she’s allergic to the energy bars you made for Barry,” Harry forged on as though he hadn’t spoken. “You need to make different ones for her."

Cisco glared at him. “No.”

“I do not have time for your petulance Ramon,” Harry said impatiently. “Jesse needs-”

“Give me one good reason I should listen to a blatant racist,” Cisco demanded. Accustomed as he was to spending most of his time with Barry and Caitlin, or alone in the lab, it had been a while since he’d had occasion to use that word. It tasted just as bitter in his mouth as he remembered.

“Ramon,” Harry growled, “I have put up with you this long-”

“Excuse me, you’ve put up with me?” Cisco said incredulously “This is my lab! You’ve been using my space, my equipment, my ideas!”

“I built STAR Labs-” Harry protested, but Cisco cut him off.

“Not this STAR Labs,” he reminded him. “This lab,  _I_  built. It belongs to Barry, and Barry’s my friend. I made Speedster Bars for my friend. Jesse? She’s not my friend, and neither are you.”

Harry made a noise of frustration in his throat, but didn’t press the issue, opting instead to turn and storm out of Cisco’s workroom.

***

It was two days before Cisco saw Harry or Jesse again. They seemed to have moved their training to one of the testing fields, which was fine with Cisco, since it meant that he didn’t have to deal with either of them. They still needed to come back at night, but Cisco did his best to avoid them and they seemed on board with that agenda, so for the most part they all stayed out of each other’s way.

That is, until Harry marched into Cisco’s workroom and dropped a bag from Big Belly Burger on the desk.

“Eat your lunch somewhere else Harry,” Cisco ordered, glancing up from the schematic he’d been examining.

“It’s not for me, it’s for you,” Harry told him, in his usual gruff, dismissive voice.

Cisco looked up at him, frowning. “I don’t remember giving you money.”

“I bought it,” Harry said impatiently. “For you.”

Cisco blinked at him, thoroughly confused. “That was . . . nice?”

“So,” Harry prompted, looking pointedly between Cisco and the bag, and Cisco reached out a tentative hand towards it. “Are we friends now?”

Cisco snatched his hand back so fast his chair rolled back an inch. “No,” he snapped, angry at himself for nearly falling for such an obvious trick.

Harry huffed out a frustrated sigh. “What’s it going to take?” he demanded.

“More than a burger!” Cisco told him incredulously.

“God damn it Ramon, what’s it going to take?” Harry repeated, with more force this time.

“It’s not about what I want in exchange,” Cisco spat, “it’s about teaching you a lesson.”

“What lesson is that?” Harry growled.

Cisco bent over his work again. “Come see me when you figure it out.”

Harry growled again, but turned and left the workroom anyway.

***

It was another day before a member of the Wells family invaded his space again, and this time it was Jesse. She poked her head shyly around the door and cleared her throat, and when Cisco looked up she waved awkwardly until he gestured for her to come in.

“What do you want?” he asked, putting down his tools.

Jesse flounced over to stand opposite him, on the other side of the work table. She was smiling in a somewhat unnerving manner, and it put Cisco on edge.

“I came to apologize,” she said, in over-exaggerated seriousness reminiscent of a little girl.

Cisco raised and eyebrow. “Really?”

“I realize that some of the things I said might have come across as a little . . . insensitive,” she admitted. “I’m sorry, and I hope you can forgive me.”

“That’s very big of you Jesse,” Cisco told her. This was clearly another attempt to get what she wanted out of him, but there was no reason to be rude.

“I mean,” Jesse shrugged, “I was only trying to be nice-”

“And like that you’ve lost me,” Cisco interrupted, bending his head over his work again.

“Oh come on!” Jesse said exasperatedly, and Cisco was surprised she didn’t stomp her foot on the floor. “I have to stop training every 20 minutes to eat. I can’t stomach any more ramen noodles!”

“Try an IV drip then,” Cisco suggested.

“For that I’d need to use the treadmill,” Jesse reminded him pointedly.

"Not my problem.” Cisco smiled to himself. It was fun, letting himself say ‘no’ for once.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the bigger person or something?” Jesse groused.

Cisco looked up at her in disbelief. “You and your dad are both blatantly racist toward me, and I’m at fault for being unwilling to put up with it?”

“You’re overreacting,” Jesse huffed.

“Oh my god!” Cisco nearly yelled, then hurriedly lowered his voice to more of a hiss. “Are you _listening_ to yourself?”

“I just want to be friends!” Jesse protested.

“You couldn’t pay me to be your friend!” Cisco spat. “Get away from me, you make my skin crawl!”

Jesse stood there staring at him for a moment, then turned and fled from the room. Cisco thought he might have heard a small sob, but he was too angry to care.

***

Cisco was locking up his workroom for the night when Harry cornered him.

“What did you say to her?” he rumbled directly behind Cisco’s head, voice almost as rough and gravely as Zoom’s.

Cisco jumped and spun around. “Seriously, didn’t we talk about this creepy thing?” he demanded, clutching at his heart.

“She was crying,” Harry said, and his eyes held a cold fury as he looked down on Cisco. “What did you say to her?”

“None of your business,” Cisco said dismissively, trying to brush past Harry.

Harry, however, placed both hands on Cisco’s chest and slammed him back into the door. “What. Did. You. Say?” he growled.

Cisco’s heart hammered in his chest. He was always the last to leave the lab, so there was no one there but Harry and himself. There was no one to save him, and he hadn’t figured out how to use the powers he’d seen Reverb display, so there was no defense to put up. He simply had to squeeze his eyes shut, hoping that whatever Harry was planning to do to him would be over soon.

Suddenly there was a rush of wind, and the pressure of Harry’s hands on his chest vanished. Cisco opened his eyes, to find Harry standing on the other side of the hallway, Jesse holding him against the wall.

“Stop!” she ordered, looking up at her father.

“But he-” Harry began, but Jesse cut him off.

“I said no,” she told him firmly, then glanced over her shoulder at Cisco. “Get out of here.”

Cisco didn’t need telling twice, he bolted from the hallway as fast as his legs would carry him and made for the exit without even stopping by the cortex to pick up his jacket.

Once he was on the road though, Cisco took a moment to think about that encounter. Clearly Jesse had gone running to daddy after her talk with Cisco, but despite the fact that she’d been crying she hadn’t told him what Cisco had said to her. She probably knew how he would react, and had guessed where he was going when he’d slipped off before he went to bed. She’d cared enough to challenge her father to come to Cisco’s rescue, and while he doubted Harry would have killed him, Jesse had still saved him from getting hurt.

Some uncharitable part of his brain wondered if perhaps they’d staged the whole thing together, but he tamped it down. Jesse wasn’t a perfect person, but he didn’t think she’d stoop as low as that.

***

It took a few days before he saw either Jesse or Harry again. For a while it seemed as though they’d simply forgotten about him, and he began to wonder if they’d found a way to work around the energy problem without him. Maybe Jesse had made the bars on her own. Maybe Harry had built another treadmill.

Then, after almost a week, Jesse turned up in his workroom.

He nearly tripped over her, actually, coming around his work table to put down his bag. She was sitting on the floor, legs stretched out in front of her, with a bottle of vodka in one hand.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Cisco demanded, once he’d caught himself on the edge of the table.

“Hiding from my dad,” Jesse told him. She sounded exhausted. “This is the only place he won’t think to look for me.”

“Glad to be of service,” Cisco said sarcastically. “Where’d you get that bottle anyway?”

“I’ve never been drunk,” Jesse informed him, avoiding the question, “and now I can’t. This whole speedster thing sucks.”

“You want me to make you Speedster Booze now?” Cisco asked dryly.

Jesse blinked up at him. “You can do that?”

Cisco rolled his eyes. “Get out of my lab.”

“I’m hiding,” Jesse repeated. “Isn’t that what friends do, hide in each other’s rooms from their parents?”

“You’re not my friend,” Cisco reminded her.

“Well, you’re my friend,” Jesse countered. She took the last swig of alcohol in the bottle, then set it down beside her. “Only one I’ve got, actually.”

“You’ve got friends back home, don’t you?” Cisco said, dragging a chair over to sit beside her.

“They don’t count,” Jesse argued. “Not anymore. I’m never going to see them again.”

“Don’t say that,” Cisco told her gently, feeling suddenly bad for her. She was, after all, stuck here, in a world vastly different to her own. “You’ll get back eventually. You . . . you don’t belong here. Eventually the multiverse will . . . correct itself.”

Jesse huffed out a bitter little laugh. “Fine then,” she said, “you’re my only friend here.”

“I’m only your friend as long as you need something from me,” Cisco laughed. “That’s not much of a friend.”

Jesse hesitated a moment. Cisco sighed, realizing that it was true and she didn’t have an argument to offer, when suddenly Jesse spoke again.

“When my dad had you pinned,” she said quietly, “when I thought he was going to hurt you, I was scared. I was scared for you.”

Cisco swallowed. Not a lot of people had defended him in his life, and he thought that even fewer of them had done so because they were afraid for him. Because they cared enough to be afraid.

“Well we’ve established you’re pretty screwed without me,” Cisco argued weakly.

Jesse shook her head. “That wasn’t the reason,” she told him. “You told my dad to come back when he’d learned his lesson, and I think I know what you meant by that now. You didn’t want us to be sorry because we needed something from you; you wanted us to be sorry because we hurt you.”

Jesse looked down miserably, then back up at Cisco. “I’m sorry we hurt you.”

Cisco took a deep, steadying breath. Then he wordlessly reached into a nearby drawer, pulled out a Speedster Bar and tossed it to Jesse.

Jesse stared at the bar in her hands in shock. “You made them?” she demanded.

“Try it,” Cisco instructed.

Jesse took a bite, then began to examine the bar as she chewed. “Bacon?” she guessed.

“Mostly,” Cisco conceded. “There’s a few other types of meat in there, and of course peanut oil-”

“What?” Jesse demanded, spitting out her mouthful of Speedster Bar.

Cisco laughed. “You’re a speedster now, genius,” he reminded her. “Your body’s pumping out adrenaline to counteract the anaphylaxis faster than you can consciously perceive it. You’re not allergic to peanuts anymore.”

Jesse threw the half-chewed mouthful she’d spit out at him, and Cisco only managed to avoid getting his shirt dirty by nearly falling out of his chair.

“Jerk!” Jesse accused, but her lips were twitching into a smile despite herself. “Why’d you say you needed to make new ones for me then?”

Cisco shrugged. “I thought it might be a good thing for us to do together,” he confessed. “I just wanted to make you feel like one of the team.”

Jesse stared at him. “You were going to do something that you’d already accomplished over again, just so you could do it with me?”

“Sure,” Cisco grinned at her stunned look. “It’s what I’d do for any of my friends.”

Jesse stared at him a moment longer, and then her face broke out in a bright, brilliant smile.

She reached out a hand towards him. “Friends?”

Cisco stood up, then took the offered hand and used it to pull Jesse to her feet. “Friends.”


End file.
